Visiting
by captainhillshipper
Summary: Steve visits an old friend while trying to get his thoughts about a new one in order. Takes place immediately following Avengers 1, in my Captain Hill headverse. :) One shot.


**A/N: Been a little too dark in here lately, had to lighten things up, especially since I'm editing the most difficult chapter in my current story. Just a little bit of Steve's thoughts before my first Captain Hill story. :)**

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Steve Rogers sat on the soft grass, the June sun warming him as the smell of the freshly cut lawn permeated his senses. His eyes were closed and, while they were, he could forget that the park-like setting of his surroundings was betrayed by the small bronze placards and, further away, in the older sections, a variety of stone markers.

He opened his eyes and looked down at the name on the plate in front of him. It was her married name. Steve was glad she'd married and had a couple of kids and was even a grandmother before the cancer took her.

Too soon, he thought. If it hadn't been for that he might have been able to see her again. But, whether or not that would have been satisfying, he wasn't sure.

"Let's see," he said, as if he was actually talking to her. "Where did I leave off yesterday?"

He had ridden directly to Pennsylvania after Thor took Loki back to Asgard, and whatever passed for justice there. Steve wasn't entirely sure, but he doubted Asgardian justice for one of the royal family would be truly what Loki deserved. However, he supposed no one else really had any good ideas and having the demi-god, and he used the term 'god' very loosely, on earth had so far proved fatal.

As he'd sat at Peggy's graveside the following weeks he'd told her how much he missed her, how much he missed the old days. Then he'd talked about the people he'd met, about the different experiences he'd had, about the Avengers, about the battle in New York. He'd drawn it out. Only a few things or people each day, so he would have a reason to keep coming back. Now he was running short on stories, but the thought of leaving didn't settle well with him, or maybe it just scared him.

And there was the fact that telling Peggy the one thing he'd left out made him feel as if he was confessing to her that it might be possible for someone else to take her place.

He argued it over in his mind. She had gone on with her life when she thought he was dead, why shouldn't he? Because he didn't really want to? Because he wanted to stay locked in the past that was never going to be present again?

He had no good arguments left, not that he'd had any at the beginning. He'd just thought that "seeing" Peggy again would let him know what he should do.

Taking a deep breath he started.

"You'd really like Deputy Director Maria Hill," he said. "She reminds me a lot of you. She's strong and capable. She doesn't take guff from the men around her."

He laughed as he recalled watching Peggy deck a recruit who'd come on to her. He could imagine Maria doing the same.

'Hill,' he reminded himself. She wasn't Maria to him, yet.

He sighed, laughing a little at himself. He'd found he honestly couldn't stop thinking about Fury's right hand woman. The last time he'd seen her still haunted him. He had seen the pain in her eyes before she'd masked it.

When he'd known Peggy, there was a time when he'd wondered if she wasn't impenetrable. She was always so serious and so closed. He knew her strength wasn't a show, but he wondered if she had to be stronger because she was a woman in the military. He found himself wondering the same about Hill, now. Was she so cold to him as they stood out on the hellicarrier gallery deck after Coulson's burial at sea because she was afraid to let him see she had emotions?

He had watched her before going up to her, not even sure if he should, the intensity of pain in her eyes had shaken him. He'd recalled the sound of Peggy's voice when they both realized he wasn't going to make it home, remembered the feeling he had as he heard her pain, knowing what it took for her to show it, his guilt at being the reason for it.

Watching Hill on the side of the ship, saying her good-byes to someone he knew must have meant a lot to her, he'd felt an urge to walk over and at least say something. She'd been one of the few people who'd been nice to him since he'd awoke. Nice meaning she had left him entirely alone. She had ignored his "fame" and gone about her business, and it had been such a relief to Steve that, though he'd only seen her a handful of times since he'd awoke, he had a certain affinity for her.

Now, sitting here and trying to "tell" Peggy about her, he wondered if it was more than that. He thought of her voice on the bridge: solid and sure. Her flat comments to Stark, despite the man's rude behavior.

Yeah, he thought, that reminded him of Peggy a whole lot.

This feeling in the pit of his stomach reminded him of Peggy, as well. The thought that Hill was way out of his league and that he was crazy to even think of her in more than a professional manner was enough to make him wonder if he didn't really have a type. He'd never really thought about it before. He'd been honest with Peggy when he'd told her that once the war started he hadn't thought about women at all, there were just more important things happening.

"But I can't get her out of my mind," he said aloud to Peggy. "And it's not just because she reminds me of you, or maybe it is, I don't know. She's strong, independent, absolutely terrifying."

He smiled down at the marker, recalling how Peggy had terrified him on more than one occasion, but never more than when he'd wanted to kiss her so badly but just couldn't. He'd been terrified of Hill on the edge of that hellicarrier a few weeks earlier. Not because he wanted to kiss her, but because he'd wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her. He wanted to be the one she talked to about her pain, wanted to be the person she could turn to. How he had arrived at this point so quickly he didn't know. Maybe it was a little guilt over leaving a strong woman like Peggy, making her cry at the end. He'd had no control over it and knew he'd have done it differently if he had.

Or maybe it was just because he had suspected more beneath the hard, cold shell everyone had told him Hill was, only they thought it went all the way to her heart. And she had proved him right, and them wrong. And no one else could see that. Something about that fact annoyed him. What was wrong with being strong _and_ human? His mother had been. She had carried the weight of the world on her shoulders, she tolerated no unkindness, no malevolence. In an era when a woman was pushed to marry because, "_honestly, how can you expect to raise a son all by yourself, you need a man to take care of you,_" she had refused and gone it alone after his father had died, when marrying would have perhaps made her life easier. She was stern with those who deserved it and loving to those who deserved it. And he suspected Hill was the same, just that a military operation like SHIELD didn't afford a lot of room for love.

It was obvious she'd loved Phil Coulson. Whether that was romantic love or platonic really didn't matter to Steve at the moment, only the fact that Maria Hill was far more complex than anyone around her could see. It intrigued him. It made him want to know more, made him want to dig deeper and find out the how's and the why's. He wanted to know how a woman so young rose through the ranks so quickly, he wanted to know, well, everything.

He laughed lightly and shook his head at his thoughts. This was far more complex than what he'd felt for Peggy. Though, to be fair to her, he'd not known her as long, and during all that time they were in the middle of a war. He realized that he would have wanted all this with her eventually, if they'd ever had the time. But they hadn't, and as much as he regretted that, wouldn't he regret it again if anything happened to Maria and he'd never taken that chance?

Rising from the ground, Steve brushed the bits of cut grass from his slacks. He smiled down at Peggy again.

"I should go back to the living," he said. "If I stay here any longer I probably will never leave, and I can't imagine you would be very happy with that."

He sighed and looked around, though his eyes really didn't take in his surroundings.

"Wish me luck," he said, then took a steadying breath and walked back to his bike.


End file.
